<Begin Segment 18>

TI: So tell me about that self defense course. Who were the students of that?

YU: They were all police students, and they had been in... well, I think they were majoring in police and they were, minimum was five feet nine, hundred and sixty-five pounds, and they were a huge bunch of guys.

[Interruption]

TI: -- just talked about a part time job teaching self defense, and you mentioned how your students were, it sounded like men who were majoring in police work, but the, one of the qualifications was that they had to be five foot nine and a hundred and sixty-five pounds, so these were fairly large men.

YU: They were all, that was the minimum.

TI: Yeah, so I'm curious, how did you get that job?

YU: You know, that was really amazing. I got the job because I think there was a fellow named Mel Bruno in, Mel Bruno in 1940 at San Jose State -- he was a good wrestler, well-known wrestler -- and he had gone to Japan, and I guess an American junior team had gone to Japan and he was on that team. And in Japan, I guess they had an opportunity to do some wrestling with the Japanese, and of course, American wrestlers are much better, so they beat all of them. And then they said something about, "Well, why don't, have you had some judo experience?" And I guess he said yes, he did, and so they had him do some judo. Of course, the Japanese judo people had never met anyone that had the wrestling experience, so I think he pinned a lot of them, and so they gave him automatically a nidan, or second degree black belt, from the Kodokan. And so he had started a judo program at San Jose in 1937, and here I came in 1940, then right after I came there, he left almost immediately after I got, I came there. And he, the reason he left at that time was the wartime preparations was on; they're gonna get everybody, the draft was on. People were starting to get drafted. But the soldiers were not in condition because America had never had a draft or anything like that, and so this was, they were all off the farm or they had not been doing much exercise, and so they were recruiting a lot of, coaches, football, basketball, track and field, and anybody that had physical education experience into the service.

Well, Mel Bruno had both the wrestling and judo experience, so he was immediately put in there, and he was, I think he was in one of the, one program, I think Gene Tunney program. So he said he's getting an appointment to that. He was going, he's going to leave. He left real suddenly, said, "Well, Yosh, I'm recommending that you be assigned to it." So right after he left, I taught the students self defense, but my self defense, I was really crummy. I really didn't know enough about self defense, except what Mel taught me. But I didn't think they were too good either. So I started to teach these students. "You have to move," I said. "You can't, you can't just sit there and expect somebody to just stick a, stick a pistol in you and you're gonna stand there, take it away." I said, "That's impossible. You have to move. So let's put more emphasis on judo." And so we got judo going. And then, of course, this was end of 1940 and December, almost a year later, judo ended.

TI: Okay, so you first started doing this part time judo before the war.

YU: Right.

TI: And then, now, after the war --

YU: After the war.

TI: -- you were able to start up again.

YU: Yeah, because for one, this program was under a man named Tiny Hartranft, and Tiny Hartranft was a physical education leader, chairman, and also he was the... what would you call it? The administrator of collegiate athletics. So this man had two titles and judo was under his program, so he... and then there was a man named Schmidt, this man Schmidt also, he had, his name was Willard Schmidt, and Willard Schmidt was the director of, for internal security at Tule Lake.

TI: How interesting.

YU: So my mother told me that he had come to visit her because we had, I guess she had kids that were in Manzanar, Tule Lake, and all over the place, so how bad the place was. And she saw, and he saw she had these pictures up there of myself and San Jose State judo team, and he recognized his students that were in the picture. And he says, "Where did this come from?" She says, "My son taught judo at San Jose State." So then when, when I went there, they were very, he, Tiny Hartranft remembered me and Willard Schmidt had seen me, seen my picture at my mother's quarters in Tule Lake. So it was, I was the first Asian that was hired at the San Jose State.

TI: Interesting. And was this to coach the judo team at that point?

YU: Yes.

TI: And this was what year again? Nineteen what?

YU: This was in 1940, I started in 1940 --

TI: '40.

YU: -- and then I left in 1941, the war came. And then I had gone back. Willard Schmidt appeared in the second time. The first time I just, I was hired just by Tiny Hartranft.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.